Pepsi-Wolf pretty much described what I remember of the old NetMech Dos days. I played a little bit of MercNet but never got into it.
It seems like there was more fighting going on amongst players and clans in the Pilot’s Lounge than in the game itself, and I did my fair share of that fighting in the lobby myself. I remember watching an entire clan get absorbed by another, and the funny thing was it was all over a two Khans having an exchange of words in the game lobby and it ended up in them getting into a dual. I myself fought a similar battle against Nav-Com.
Most of the politics seemed out in the open to me , I knew who was against who and who was going to back who if I started some trouble. It is was atmosphere that is hard to find anyware else these days, there was always some drama going on, but when push came to shove players and clans would carry out their disagreements on the battlefields and for the most of it everyone honored the outcome.

Most of what I got in on was at the tail end of the NetMech erra, I then drug my clan over to Mech Commander, and then tried MC2 which turned out to be a flop, then we wound up in MW4. And the MW4 scene was an entirely different crowed. Nobody seemed to want to cause trouble anymore, most everyone stuck to playing league games or just hanging out playing with each other, there was no real action ware clans were trying to take each other on.

Pepsi is right, the bickering is the most vivid part that you remember, and are often part of the fondest memories we have of those bygone days. To me it was the bickering that kept it thriving. And way back when I do remember playing NetMech on Kali95, I had joined up with the Kell Hounds.

The Netmech Clans were 20 parts fighting on Kali, 1 part fighting in game.

All depended on the clan too. God I remember Mercjohns bieng the most profane person on the GrandCouncil server. Cracked me up though.

All and all it was fun. TKZ action was pretty heated when it happened. GrandCouncil was really the savior of the game and what allowed it to last the longest. Most of the clanners around were GC registered since the Registry and TKZ died horrible, slow deaths.

I myself was the Tai-Shu of DCM towards the end of TKZ. Most of our battles were dramafests of the opposite team scrambling to find freebooters (volunteer players) to get them enough players to compete with how many DCM would show up. Then it was a few hours of bickering back and forth over who was over or under on tonnage and in the end nothing really getting done. It was still a great time though

Between the Clans, IS and mercs everything was very political and role playing towards the battletech universe was the norm. People would practice all the time in Kali but the only time it really mattered was during a War or a bloodname/rank tryout. I remember our clan had over 110 people at one point on our roster, mostly active and so did Clan Mongoose, most other Clans would sit in the lobby and blast the screen with posts on "come join us for war" just so they could have enough players to have a fighting chance. Only people who really gave us a run for our money were SRM (whom the IS hired constantly to fight us), we only sent our elite units up against them and even they would struggle sometimes.

Because everything was political and we were roleplaying a lot, it made going to war more difficult. Since I was a Warden like Ulric Kerensky I got in arguments with the Crusaders in my Clan and other clans about invading the Inner Sphere constantly. Especially when I became IlKhan and told the clans we werent going to invade, haha pissed em off a lot. It made being in the upper ranks in any unit a lot of fun, but frustrating for the privates and mechwarriors who just wanted to play and had little to do with invasion plans and politics.

My favorite wars were against Clan Mongoose, their size matched ours and so did player skill, it was always a good time having 50+ people from either side on a Friday night fighting it out in pairs of 2. I think their Khans name was Knockmore... sounds familiar. No Crusader Clan ever made it to Terra though! The maps and how the leagues were set up were a lot of fun. Our clan in the Registry started out in the NE quadrant of the starmap and won a few planets, in the GC we were in the NW quadrant beside mongoose. Us and Mongoose took over large plots of space left by Clans that fell apart. That time was by far the best online experience I have ever had with any game. Unfortunately between school and sports I left the league as ilKhan right around the time Mercs came out but remained Loremaster with my clan for a little while longer, then stopped playing entirely when most of my old clan mates had left.

and you would sometimes see a locked room with only one person "Playin with Mr. Winkie"

When you went looking for a war you would offer up like this:
Enter a Hall hails,etc.
2v2 c4 hains .75g 5kills and offer up ranks.

This happened all thru the month and got intense everytime twards the end. Wars and Clans locking themselves in Halls because they were tired of the being owned for Honor Points.

mpiggy or Mplayer was great for the live community aspect. But getting a game to launch over our 14.4 and 26.4 dial ups was a game of chance.

PPl gettiing stuck trying to war 3v3. Lagging at the lanch screen. Offering to get out and push when she stalled out.
Wfrp.
calling Hold bc wing lagged out
Jump Jet and lag one min.. The next your at altitude unknown looking on your DFA Cam for any signs of life. Free falling forever.

Man it was great. SC was strict and functioned as a true clan..

*comms had to report to *Cpts on how their 1st and 2ed MW's were doing.
Those reports went thru the chain to the Nova Coms
Stars were always in competition with each other and Gal Comms over saw the ToP's for ranks in their respected Binarys.
Other Kelshek members were responsible for tracking performance and competition.
You couldent run tons that was out of your rank or get sat down for a week.

Now that I look back on it what I enjoyed the most was the fact that the PLAYERS were in control, not the developers. The game was as is and the players made the atmosphere, the game was an outlet to settle scores.

The devs couldn't drop a nerf bomb and completely change the game. i.e. EQ, DAoC, SWG, and many more dev controlled games.

I agree with Venom it was a little hard core but I know at least 4 of us were RL active duty Sergent's in SC.

The training we did in SC was awesome - whom ever was best at something would teach the rest of us their skill, BT would teach us Class 1, Papermate would teach us Class 4 and then every session we would finish off with 5 to 10 minutes of DFA practice!!!